Behind the “Chemical Erection Warrant” was a Real Crime

According to the Washington Post, the cops want to force a seventeen-year-old to have an erection and then photograph his aroused genitals. They want to do this because they suspect that the seventeen-year-old took a picture of his erection and sent it to his girlfriend via texting—“sexting” as it is now called.

A judge actually granted that warrant, though it has not yet been executed.

But there was no good explanation for why anyone thought it was acceptable in the first place.

Now there have been further developments. Police Detective David Edward Abbott, a member of the Northern Virginia-Washington D.C. Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, was the person who submitted the warrant. Reason.com reports:

The teen was eventually sentenced to one year of probation. Here’s the kicker: Abbott sued the teen’s lawyer for defamation. The lawyer, Jessica Foster, remarked to the media that the warrant to take pornographic pictures of her client—to be used as evidence that he was guilty of creating child pornography—was “crazy.”

“Who does this?” Foster had said. “It’s just crazy.”

Abbott said the comments caused him severe emotional distress; he claimed he was threatened and called a pedophile, according to NBC.

Authorities now believe Abbott was a pedophile. He had inappropriate contact with two young boys, ages 11 and 13, according to patch.com. Police attempted to arrest him at his home earlier today, but he refused to surrender and eventually shot himself.

So, to recap, a child molester was put on the Northern Virginia-Washington D.C. Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. There he charged a teen for sexting another teen, not with indecent exposure, but with child pornography for photographing himself. Furthermore, he convinced a judge that the police should do “child porn” of the suspect. He did this in a state where it was legal for the two teens to have sex (I don’t approve of this, but that is the law).

So while he is attempting to imprison a boy for decades for sexting his girlfriend, he is guilty of sexually abusing much younger boys.

This is evidence that this type of “task force” has too much arbitrary power. Rather than causing sexual predators to fear the law, they attract them. That is a real crime.